Toshiba Places STB2F

Important note: the HD TV tuner in this media centre is a DVB-T tuner rather than a DVB-T2 tuner. This means it cannot pick up HD Freeview channels in the UK. It should, however, have no problem picking up HD channels in other countries or SD channels in the UK.

After a first less-than convincing attempt, Toshiba is back with the Places STB2F media centre, equipped this time with a digital recording feature. So then, is this a fuller, corrected version of the STB1F? This is what we're hoping for, especially as the TV interface impressed us on the first version.

The design is entirely different on this new model, going from a voluminous brick to an L-shaped box. It certainly looks more interesting but it's still rather large and not necessarily practical to use.
The connectivity is slightly different. SD TVs can now be connected via RCAs (video and audio composites).


The remote and the interface are unchanged, as is the still very disappointing multimedia compatibility. We're not going to go back over that here however and refer you to our test of the Toshiba Places STB1F to give you an idea of the strengths and weaknesses of this platform.

Finally you can record and control live digital broadcast

The major weak point of the STB1F was that you couldn't record programmes. That has now been changed and indeed is the rationale for the introduction of the STB2F. We nevertheless think that it would have been possible to update the first version with these features without having to launch a new product.

As there is no internal storage however, you have to link up a USB peripheral (key or external hard drive) to record your programmes. Note however, there's no NTFS support and you'll have to make sure you're using FAT32 or XFS formatted peripherals. Prefer XFS for long recordings.


You can still do your programming from the very well set-up programming guide. To recap, it uses an online database to source programme information (you have to link the centre up to the Internet), rather than the EPG, which isn't so well supplied. This gives it the edge over many EPG systems and displays a small illustration for each programme as well as summaries and a guide for up to ten days.

The recordings aren't very well named on the USB peripheral but if you use the centre's record section you'll find the channel logo, the name of the programme and even a summary. Something for the competition to aspire to!

You can control any live programme by pausing it, however you can't move from pause to record. The tuner won't allow you to view one channel while recording another.